The Easy Button - Reflections on Parashat Nasso 5775

America is, by and large, a shortcut culture. Want to make a fast fortune? Find a shortcut for something people hate to do. TV remotes. Wash & wear clothes. Plastic food. Online shopping. EZPass. Tan in a Can. Diet Pills. If there's a shortcut, you can be assured that we'll find it.

This week's Torah portion talks about the dangers of spiritual shortcuts. In it we read the segment about the Nazir (a term for which there is no adequate English translation.) 

Who is a Nazir? Any person who, with great public fanfare, swears off wine (alcohol) and by extension ANY product made of, or containing grapes; who must let their hair grow long and shaggy; and who cannot become exposed to death (tumat hamet) - even for their closest relatives, like mom and dad. (To gain a deeper understanding of tumat hamet, click HERE.)

Is the Nazir to be praised for his self-denial or is he to be condemned? On the one hand, the Torah describes the Nazir as 'kadosh,' holy. On the other hand, he must bring a sin offering upon the successful completion of the vow.

There are venerable rabbinic voices down through ages on both sides of that question. I stand firmly with those who condemn the Nazir.

Consider the following: why would anyone in their right minds undertake such a disruptive, restrictive oath? What kind of mindset would volunteer for the life of a religious ascetic? 

An out-of-control person, that's who. Like a raging alcoholic, who desperately hopes that the power of the oath will buttress his weakening resolve.

Or perhaps someone who needs to call attention to themselves; one who derives self-esteem in holding themselves to a higher standard than their peers. This individual constantly gauges their religious performance against others - and consistently finds everyone else lacking. This type of Nazir finds bargain-basement self-esteem - not through hard work and honest achievement, but through building himself up by tearing others down.

And by the way: who (besides our Nazir) is the one other person on the planet who cannot be exposed to tumat hamet, even for a spouse, parent, sibling or child? Answer: the Cohen Gadol, the High Priest of Israel.

On a certain level, the Nazir is trying to be as holy as High Priest himself. 

It takes a lifetime for a person to prepare for the awesome responsibilities of the office of High Priest; but our Nazir, by mumbling a few words, catapults himself from zero-to-holy in 4.3 seconds. Neat trick.

The Nazir is trying to take a spiritual shortcut, and the Torah suggests that there are no shortcuts in the ethereal realm. That's why the Nazir brings the sin offering, and that's why the burning of the hair.

A sin offering (chatat) is brought for the commission of an inadvertent sin: the person meant no harm, but accidentally violated a serious Torah prohibition. Thus the Nazir brings a sin offering because his intent for self-improvement was laudable, but the execution was flawed.

And in one of the most curious aspects of the ending ritual of Nazir, his/her hair is shaved off their head and thrown into the fire. Why? This luxurious mane of hair, this very public sign of the Nazir vow, is symbolic of the entire Nazir experience. And in the end, it goes up in smoke. The acrid smell of the burning hair says: your spiritual shortcut accomplished nothing, your self-abnegation was all for nought, you're back where you started, you still have to deal with your issues.

Because no vow, no pill, no Easy Button, can fix the things that are wrong in your life.

We don't have the Nazir vow in our day. But sadly, we still see the all-too-human Nazir impulse: not just in the addictive personality, but in mean-spirited, petty people who derive their self-esteem by denigrating others - with an acerbic tongue, or an arrogant attitude, or competitors in the frumkeit (holier-than-thou) olympics.

There are no shortcuts to spiritual growth and development. Spiritual growth is hard work. It requires humility and introspection; a sober evaluation of one's strengths and weaknesses; a receptiveness to the still, small voice inside us all; a willingness to see steady change over time; consistency; and patience with oneself. It requires Torah study and deepening our performance of mitzvot. It requires constant vigilance against complacency, intellectual stagnation and arrogance. It's the work of a lifetime - you can't bang it out in a weekend or two, or sub it out, or find easy answers on the internet. It's the ultimate do-it-yourself project and it comes with no instruction booklet. 

But the results of applied effort will, over time, yield inner peace, wisdom, and improved relationships. And if everybody on the planet focused on fixing themselves, imagine the kind of world we would inhabit! That is the Torah's eschatological vision; and isn't that the place where we're all trying to get to?

So instead trying to impress everyone with ostentatious demonstrations of piety, do something truly Jewish: fix yourself from the inside out, and by extension, repair the world.

Shabbat Shalom.

Redeeming Ourselves - Reflections on Passover 5775

There is an oft-quoted Zohar which states that Hashem redeemed the Jewish People from the Egyptian bondage prematurely because we had sunken to the 49th level of tumah; had the Jews sunken one more level, to the 50th and final level, we would have been irredeemable. So Gcd hastened the Redemption in order that the Children of Israel not be lost to history forever.

In thinking about this the other day, my very perspicacious daughter Elisheva asked me, "Abba, why did Hashem wait until the last possible moment to save us? What was He waiting for?

It's a splendid question, don't you think? (And yes, I'm braggin' on my brilliant kid.)

As I have written ELSEWHERE, Taharah/Tumah represents the spectrum between the Source of Life and the utter absence of life, and that it is a part of the human condition to cycle between these poles. The 50th degree of tumah mentioned in the Zohar represents death itself. 

But not just physical death, the quantifiable absence of heartbeat or brain waves. Death in this context can be defined more broadly as the state in which we are no longer able to exert any power and influence in the world. 

In this sense, poverty is akin to death, because the poor do not have the means to affect the world in which they live. Thus says the verse: "Precious in the Eyes of the Lcrd is the death of His chasidim, His dear ones." (Psalms 116:15) Not martyrdom, but poverty. "The A-lmighty looked at every attribute and could find none better for Israel than poverty." (Chagigah 9B) Why? Because in their sorrows, the poor look constantly Heavenward. 

For the same reason, victimhood is death, because victims are objects, not subjects, in their own world. Victims are unable to make any mark or impact on their world; they are but one small step from being literally dead.

The ultimate poor person, the ultimate victim, is the slave. Slaves must focus entirely on imperatives of mere survival; there can be no attention paid to the higher, spiritual callings of life. 

Hashem had to redeem us from Egypt because we were utterly incapable of redeeming ourselves. We were victims, not actors, in the grand drama of our own lives.

I will tell you that many people fill their lives with the "have-to's:" the grocery shopping, the dry cleaners, music lessons for the kids, dropping the car off at the shop, errands, here, errands there - the nuts and bolts of mere survival. The day ends in exhaustion, and what have we truly accomplished? We have made no lasting impact in the world. In 100 years, in 1000 years, no one will remember the salon appointment or the business lunch. When all the dust settles, we have expended ourselves on the hamster wheel of today, for no other purpose than to jump back on the hamster wheel tomorrow.

For many, any residual effort and energy after the "have-tos" is devoted to personal pleasures and recreation. But like the slave in Egypt-land, there is scant little time left for the higher, spiritual callings of life. We are, in a sense, trapped as victims of our own lives, where life molds us, instead of us molding our lives.

We work hard for five so we can play hard for two. What a bleak existence! No wonder people do drugs and alcohol.

But there is a higher Geulah (redemption): V'alu moshi'im behar Tzion..."And the Saviors shall rise from Mount Zion to judge Mount Seir..." (Ovadiah 1:21) Saviors? In the plural? Our Sages understand this verse to mean that the ultimate redemption will come about in one of two ways: the Redemption of Pesach, which was the redemption of the victim, of the aino zochim, a violent, bloody redemption requiring miraculous, Divine intervention; or the Redemption of Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur - the redemption of Teshuvah, the redemption of the Zochim, the bloodless redemption of the worthy.

To answer Elisheva's question: why did Hashem wait until the last possible moment to save us? What was He waiting for? 

Perhaps He was waiting for us to redeem ourselves. 

The Higher Redemption is when we don't behave like victims; when we are proactive in influencing the world around us. That is why matzah has two identities: the bread of poverty/helplessness/affliction and the Bread of Freedom & Redemption. And that is why the Talmud in Tractate Megillah says that, in the Messianic Era, all the Jewish holidays will be abolished save for Purim - because on Purim, we saved ourselves. To be sure, we understood Gcd's Hand in human affairs, but the great salvation arose, not through supernatural miracles, but rather via hidden miracles worked through the agency of great heroes: Esther, Mordechai, and those who took up arms to defend themselves against the enemy. We were actors, not victims; men, not mice.

Gcd was waiting for us to redeem ourselves, and I think He awaits us yet. Based on the actions of Jacob in parashat VaYetze, one of the enduring lessons of Torah is that when we do everything in our power, Gcd takes care of the rest. 

"...the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no (human) could have dreamed would come his way." -Goethe

Listen to Goethe. Commit yourself. Look at the world around you. Use the prism of Torah to understand the rapidly-changing events in the world we inhabit. Trust your intuition;  cultivate the soul-voice that speaks Truth to guide you. You'll know what to do. 

This Pesach, let's not wait to be redeemed. Let's redeem ourselves.

Chag Sameach.